
A 



CENTENNIAL EDITION 



Semi-Centeniiial Oration 



I ( 



AMERICAN I:NDEPENDEInCE. 




PORTLAND : 
CENTENJs'IAL PUBLISHING CO. 

187(5. 




CENTENNIAL EDITION 



Semi- Centennial Oration 



AMERIOATsT INDEPENDENCE. 



PORTLAND : 
CENTENNIAL PUBLISHING CO. 

1876. 






Stephen Berry, Printer, Portland. 



? 



PREF AC E 



We have called this oration THE semi-centennial, because it 
is unique. Among the hundreds of towns which on the 4th of 
July, 1826, celebrated the close of the half century of American 
Independence, it was reserved for Dayton, Montgomery County, 
Ohio, to i^roduce an oration which has survived the second half 
century, and become a household word in thousands of families 
in all parts of the Union. It was delivered by Peter P. Lowe, 
Esq., and was published by request. In Ohio it is still quoted, 
as frequently as either Shakespeare or the Bible. It is as quota- 
ble as Poor Richard's Almanac. Reader, if it be new to you, do 
not lay it aside hastily. Reserve it for a leisure hour, refresh 
yourself with a careful perusal, and you afterwards, on many 
and various occasions, shall find its rich expressions recurring to 
your memory, like a cheerful companion, helping you to keep 
the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine. 

When reading the works of Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, 
Mark Twain, Petroleum V. Nasby, Sut Lovengood and the like, 
we experience more or less of a drawback on our enjoyment, 
from a feeling that it was a waste of time for men of talent to 
have written such stuff. The orations, on the other hand, of 
Daniel Pratt, or of George Francis Train, fail to give us unal- 
loyed pleasure, because there is always a mingling of compassion 
with our appreciation of the rare language. With the oration 
before us there is no drawback of either kind. The author is 
still living; and has been honored, respected and trusted for the 
last forty years, for his good judgment, good sense, and attention 
to the duties of the legal profession ; pity, therefore, would be 



wasted on him. Nor can we feel at all inclined to reprove him 
for using his time in writing a burlesque ; this oration was a seri- 
ous effort, and given to the press in a sober conviction that it 
was worth printing. But, in a few years, the author perceived 
his mistake, in allowing his fellow citizens to print what he had 
written while intoxicated with shallow draughts of the Pierian 
Spring. Drinking deeper had sobered him again, and he en- 
deavored to buy up and burn the oration. Some wag, discover- 
ing this, issued a new edition, and saved the work for immortal- 
ity. Mr. Lowe soon advanced to a still higher stage of wisdom, 
and joined with the rest of the world in heartily laughing at this 
most extraordinary ebullition of his youthful zeal and half-ac- 
quired learning. If it were not so, if we thought that it would 
give any pain to him, in his present venerable age, to hear of 
this reprint, we certainly should have sought some other way in 
which to raise funds for the Centennial Celebration. But we 
are happy in believing that he Avill rather enjoy this new proof 
of the usefulness of his early effort ; usSf ul, although in a very 
different way from what he, in his boyish dreams, anticipated 
when he wrote it. 

Go forth anew, little work, to contribute to the harmless amuse- 
ment of mankind ; and mayst thou have an immortality beyond 
that of the oration of Lysias over those who fell on the Isthmus. 
Certainly no burlesque, written with the design of being ridicu- 
lous, can equal the splendor af thy bombastic and well nigh un- 
intelligible flights. 

C. P. Co. 

All the foot notes are by the present editor. 



ORATION. 



Friends and Fellow-citizens : 

Albeit I have been appointed by the honorable committee 
of arrangements to perform the duties of orator of this day, 
being the fiftieth anniversary of our National Independ- 
ence, it meaneth not my adequacy to be satisfactory. 

Having had less time to prepare an oration than is usually 
given on such an occftsion, I can scarcely have a lixed hope 
of passing the reach of censure and criticism, which may 
charge on this, the first feeble effort of an unpracticed de- 
claimer. Confidently persuaded, however, that the feAv 
clogged and undigested remarks which may fall from the 
lips of your humble servant, will be so paralyzed as not to 
be worth eliciting either your condemnation or censure, 
without another emotion of self-apology, I will proceed to 
the discharge of that duty which has been so flatteringly 
intrusted to my care. And in order that you may have a 
more clear and happier notion, of the object of this day's 
national commemoration, than I have the presumption to 
give, I will read to this respectable auditory a copy of a 
letter written by the venerable John Adams the day after 
the signing of that ever memorable Chart of Freedom, which 
you have just heard read ; and which is in a style of pro- 
phetic enthusiasm, and reads in these words : 

" Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was 
debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was, nor will 



be clecided among men. A resolution was passed, without one 
dissenting colony, ' that these United Colonies are, and of right 
ought to be, free and independent States, and as such they have, 
and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude 
peace, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things 
which other States may rightfully do.' You will see, in a few 
days, a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled 
us to this mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify 

it in the sight of God and man. 

* * * * * * * 

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable 
epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it 
will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anni- 
versary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of 
deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It 
ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, 
sjjorts, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of 
this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore. 

" You will think me transported with ^enthusiasm, but I am 
not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure that 
it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defeud 
these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of 
ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than 
worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that 
day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust 
in God we shall not." 

The day on which that declaration of freedom was signed, 
and the day alluded to in this letter, is the Sabbath day of 
freedom. It is the celebration of this day that has congre- 
gated us here ; the federal and ingathering States use it as 
a day of annual festivity — to us it is apt* to be. It has 
almost become an international custom among nations, to 
celebrate the birthday and achievements of great and good 
men ; though the practice by some has been denounced with 
a bitter disapprobation, in consequence of the moral turpi- 
tude of venerating man. However proper, or otherwise, this 



*AptU8, fitted, or fitting. 



practice may be, is left for you to decide. But palsied be 
the tongue to proscribe, and withered the arm to prevent, 
the practice of celebrating the birthday of this nation, of 
commemorating the first jubilee of our independence : of 
commemorating those imperishable principles of equality 
that are so naturally implanted on the breast-bone of human 
. nature, as it is in the least creeping insect that crawls the 
earth, as well as the mightiest animal that stalks in the 
forest. Is it a privilege then to celebrate this annual peace 
coming day ? It is ! and may God grant it may be per- 
durable as the livid stream of time. Roll back the tide of 
time to the infancy of this government, to the period of its 
impotency and oppression, and now behold its rise. Behold 
the potency of its almight}^ power ; behold her principles as 
the best digested political fabric known to the civilized king- 
doms of the inhabitable earth. To give hearty cheers of 
jubilation, to these occurrences in her history, is highly com- 
mendable ; as it ought to remind us, after being grateful to 
the Author of Space, to be obedient subjects to the laws of 
this novel and approved government ; a nation unsurpassed, 
by none transcended. That period of our annalist, so 
methodized and distinguished as the time of discoveries, 
using the years from 1492 up to 1607, was a period in which 
the seasons were marked with no other event than human 
butchery ; distress, the most adverse, fell upon the itinerant 
pilgrims of this continent — after the year 1607, settlements 
progressed with greater ease and rapidity ; though often then, 
when attempting to set their seal down amid the wild grass 
of a forest howl, they were deterred by threats and . slaugh- 
tered by the untame savage. You who emigrated hither- 
wards have ever had the benefit of a Territorial or State 
government — enacted by your own agents, and based upon 
the blood of your peace-making parents. 

The continental inhabitants were blighted* with the pat- 



♦Some copies have, plighted. 



8 

ronage of their old mother ; avarice stained the parental 
connection, and the offspring impeached the parents. The 
promised vein of faith was violated by covinous acts of 
particularization.* 

This bill was born in the English Parliament ; it was sup- 
ported, nursed and matured by diplomatic classicality,t and 
when enforced it operated upon the heads of the provincials, 
as the antidote to national error, and a breach of private 
confidence. Yes, the protectress of the pigmy proved the 
betrayer of the same : for would it be a fair inference to say, 
that because England was auxiliary troops to the Americans, 
during the French war, that the Americans should ever re- 
main a tributary power, and subject to English political and 
municipal regulations, however unnatural to reason and 
universal justice ? It would not. Yet the assumed right 
was enforced. It was this that galded the pigmy and made 
it cry aloud, as the heated embers were rolling in volcanic 
combustion from the edicts of the Judas parent. The pro- 
vincial called for equal rights and free principles. A voice 
heard the necessitous call of the chill-wornj inhabitants of 
the new world, and transmitted unto them the translucent 
garb of equality : independent of these trials, they met with 
other catastrophies, which are beyond my reach to decipher. 

The Indians who formerly inhabited this, and primitively 
the old States, have receded by cartel § or otherwise, to other 
almost impenetrable forests ; where they may still exercise 
the immunity of making a barbecue of each joint of the 
distrained animal, leaving no vestige here of their tenant- 
ship, save the tumuli that are so prominently interspersed 
over their former habitations. They are gone, going, and 
are still to go, (it is to be lamented,) as the migratory sub- 
jects of power, to the place stipulated in the compact ; which 



Specific acts of deceit, t Benefit to classes. 
t Intermitteut fevers were very prevalent in the West. 
§ Militarj". A writing of truce, &c. 



9 

sayeth not the volition was a legal one, or that the liqui- 
dated price was a compensatory one, or that the eviction 
defyeth continual claim.* And it is equally to be feared 
that the inherent indolence of their nature forbid a hope of 
their ever being introduced into the folio of civilization ; 
however, they seem happy in their lambent pathway of at- 
tenuation. They invoke their Areouski, whiff the calumet 
of peace, and on de novo ouster, they mingle their dithy- 
rambic requiem with the bland breeze that sifts itself through 
the rush and supple jack of the woods ; and as an exhalation 
of an inheritance abated, the sanctity of the lawf has gone 
forth in its purification, J to withdraw from their eyes the 
humid curtain of anguish, by urging the sun-worshipers to 
humiliation under the vine and fig tree of promise, as the 
future safeguard to become joint heirs of an inheritance 
under a sure and invariable law dispenser. 

It is presumed that the circumstances that occasioned the 
Revolutionary War have their stained impressions on your 
memories; that it rooted not in any jealousies or anxiety of 
carnage and human slaughter on the part of the united col- 
onies, but from an imprejudicated instinct, not to bear the 
burden of unrepresented taxes and stamp duties. They re- 
sisted. England, ever willing to cloud the gray dawn of 
the occasional ray that broke in distant glimmerings to the 
hoping vision of the poor provincial, by duties that have 
elicited one round and universal burst of fulmination by 
every son§ of the continent, by duties that once sucked the 
very artery of our political respectability as dry as the inner 
walls of pyramid. This country, in order to expoliate itself 
from this canker-worm of hardship, it became necessary 
that they should have recourse, firstly to arms, secondlj- 



* Legal. The dispossession from their land will not extinguish their title. 

tSome copies read " lawn." 

tSome read "glorification." 

§ Some read " every one of the continents." 



J)e 



novo ouster-renewed ejection. 



10 

to death, in order to obtain their present immunities ; which 
are that all men are born equally free, have certain natural, 
inherent and unalienable rights. In this chaos of aspect, it 
became necessary that the lever of management should be 
wielded and guided by one whose martial prowess and abil- 
ity were inartificial, strong, pure, prospective ; and whose 
integrity would not be immolated to personal aggrandize- 
ment or self-whim. Washington was the genio* of selection ; 
'twas he who buffed the surge of the impending storm that 
beaconedf ailing of the most heartrending oppression. Prov- 
idence and fortune must have aided their choice in so good 
and so great a man, else we must have been launched in 
the irretrievable gulph of political slave mire — ^he became 
the polar beacon to the distressed Columbian ! 'Tis he 
whose character is unsparingly embosomed in the affections 
of living millions, as its pellucid shape is symmetrised in 
the annals of the faithful historiographer. 

A true description of his merit must cheer the lowest de- 
graded nature, and leave the unwary $ in stoiy and song, 
in the indefinable labyrinth of wonder, while it newly ex- 
cites many to climb, by example, the same virtuous spire of 
interminable glory. Universal admission allows he was a 
qualified man for all the calls of civil society ; whether it 
be assailed by the poisonous forks.§ of despotism, or goaded 
by unrepresented stamp duties, he was alike firm and inflex- 
ible. To acidulate a private or public motive of his, would 
be eking from the dust of devoted honesty the laurels of 
national security, happiness and ease. He mitigated the 
damp cheek of those who " spoke out of tribulation and 
anguish in many tears." 

No official act of his acted as a baleful star to the confed 



♦Obsolete, but good in its day. 
t Others read " beckoned." 
$ Unskilled, unlearned. 
§ Tongue of lured slanderer. 



11 

eratiou ; his attention was ever directed to all points of ag- 
gression ; he eyed the wave of Champlain, and made the 
redoubtable nocturnal sortie at Princeton ; he humored the 
tumor of commotion in the disaffected ; he allayed the fears 
of Congress by dispassionate statements. The deliberate 
potency of his soul never wandered from its aim, or avoided 
the brazen visitant of death, that glittered in pageantry, and 
gleamed in tired vengeance, to gain a conquest not unequal 
in its vicissitudes to that of the Mithridatic war. 'Twas he 
who was stable in the hour and article of death. He col- 
luded with no party, but collated fate with liberty. Mor- 
pheus's embrace never complained of his lethargy, or the 
camp tent of his indolence. His furtive vigilance watched 
the haze of distress, whilst the morning shone upon his em- 
blazoned armor in nnretrenched delight. But the death 
wave of carnage ended ; he instanter resigned the highest 
post in the gift of a true* people. And when he left New 
York for that purpose, the unbroken accents of mingled ven- 
eration rended the air, and dissolved in tears, in gratitude to 
him, the author of personal security, personal liberty, and a 
signor manual. Yea, he stood in the gates of ThermopjdaB 
for eight years, and no one dare stain his name with a foible. 

Equality, power, and a new standard of measures have ob- 
viously been the result of his benignant mind ; and these 
truths live in a land when the memory of man runneth to its 
incult state, and predicament ; a land, since only a little 
while, was lined with the poor doom-stricken red brothers, 
who grew Avith the sprig and sproused upon nature's first 
attitude, and in their stead civilization runs a flattering race. 
The anticipating genius has touched the luxuriant fibre of 
internal improvements ; the mind's eye of experience ap- 
proves of domestic manufactories, and a Clay. Washington's 
presidential career was unspotted as the vestal gleam that 



♦others, " free." 



12 

• 
glittered from the sun and dances upon the horizon : his 

name glides along the walls of the political assemblies of 
these republics ; his consistency propped the right of home 
taxation and immunities ; his bust has an abiding place in 
the cottage, the palace, and the forum ; his spirit lingers in 
the memory of wasted patriots ; and when the sequel requiem 
of their existence rings, his clay lodged voice seemeth to say : 
" Well done ! thou good and faithful patriot ; thou hast left 
the lighthouse of equality* and come home to the general 
fold of thy fathers, where there is no bloody arrantry to per- 
form, or stint of appetite required ; " his maxims bound from 
the oriental to the occidental shores, and from the arctic to 
the antarctic circles. 

The epithalamium of territorial acquisition has become a 
proverbial song ; the redolent breeze wafts its pennants on 
the surface of all waters ; precepts allowing not equal priv- 
ilege to the true gentile and atheous wretch, his country 
knows no evil save the evil of sin. For these probities in 
character shall we not say, Washington, Oh ! Washington ! ! 
peace to thy name and dust that lie in the dark valle}^ of 
the dead. In 1759, Wolfe, Moncton, Montcalm, and Sen- 
ezergus, noble war-worn spirits of the French war, breathed 
their last accents on the plains of Abraham ! in the prece- 
dent conflict Braddock died in the arms of Washington ! 
The gallantry displayed at Breed's Hill ; the capture of 
Fort Chambree ; the defeat of Charlton at Longuisle ; the 
skirmishes on the summit brow of Haellem in 1776 ; the 
faithful sortie at Monmouth ; the vigilance of Pulaski. The 
settlements of Wyoming met a diabolized butchery. Baron 
De Kalb, at the head of one brigade at the battle near 
Camden, withstood a long while Cornwallian skill and de- 
vice. And, after the strangef veteran had received eleven 
wounds, he breathed the death vapor of an immolated 

* A poetical designation for the United States, 
t Foreign. 



13 

martyr, for our liberty. Oh ! that a little veneration might 
be transfused into your unbroken and privileged spirits ! 
Can you behold the glowing texture of departed glory and 
not sigh at the blood rivulet that meandered from the 
battle summit for such as died at Leuctra and Marathon for 
our liberty ? 

These are a very few of the many circumstances attending 
the conflict of decision, but these are sufficient, amply suf- 
ficient, to endear us to those principles as inculcated by our 
god-like parent and protector. The rays of light and glory, 
as predicted by the old venerable Ex-President, are verified ; 
they are beaming refulgently, and he has lived to see the 
end, and the end of his seeing is apt* to be under the admin- 
istration of his own son. The discrimination, firmness and 
soundness of diction, in all the arts of our land are not less 
exalted to tliose of any other country. The fundamental 
regulations of the United States, with the State privilege, 
variation from the uniformity of national policy, are of such 
a standard and completion as safely secures to each individ- 
ual his life and property. In this country intrinsic grandeur 
meets with her due reward ; and we proscribe the doctrine 
that brings a man to power and eminence in consequence 
of his inheriting the political vein of blood. Though it is 
almost past our belief, yet it is an unequivocal fact, that 
this State has settled with a greater rapidity than any other 
of the sisterhood. Her character in point of population, at 
the growing age of twenty-four years, stands in the fourth 
computation ; her future prospects second to none. Arti- 
ficial canal navigation, domestic trade, and a general school 
system, are fast maturing into usefulness. And whilst the 
present incumbent of the general head acts upon the base of 
virtue, that necessary qualification in a republican govern- 
ment, we have nothing to fear. Some of his measures are 

•Fitting. 



14 

• 
opposed, such as sending diplomatic agents to Panama ; 
many, very many, deem this a good measure, besides a very 
beneficial both to that and this country. 

Soldiers and veterans of the Revolutionary "War ! You 
who helped to defend the elements of this political fabric ! 
You who brooked the hard surge of war ! You who stood 
in the fiery furnace of affliction ! You who fought with 
deathless ardor in the chivalrous field of Mars ! It is to you 
we owe the debt and burst of gratitude ; it is to you we are 
bound, by every moral and hororable precept, for our im- 
munities in this life. When the last day of your time hath 
come to 3^ou, and your scar-worn spirits shall have gone 
down to the dark dusty valley and shadow of death, unat- 
tended with our pure and devotional tear, then will the 
temples of Philo, Ombus, Esneh and Denderah, which from 
the phonetic key bare the inscriptions of the names of Alex- 
ander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra and Beneice, be by 
time grated into the common dust of the earth. 

Though this your hard earned government is less liable, 
perhaps, to ruin, than any other in the world, yet her great 
and glorious name may be soiled with the blood of revolu- 
tion and carnage. Rome once had the centripical power of 
the whole world within her walls ; yet has her power crum- 
bled into ashes, and her seven hills are pruned and worn 
bare. Julius Ctesar once overcome the Nervii; but where 
is Csesar's country? Why! it is scourged by the imper- 
ceptible he'mlock of luxury. Poor Athens, the birth-place 
of Sculpture and Geometry ! With you the canopy of war 
has ever darkened j'our hoping hopes : the blood of Leoni- 
das once stained your Octaran streights, but left you unfet- 
tered. Oh ! Grecian, raise once more your almighty siege 
worn arm, and, with fell purpose, revisit the wound of Ibra- 
him Pacha, and still look in hope for equality and glory, for 
they may yet light upon your tired brow. Fifty years, my 
old patriots, have passed down the current and tide of time : 



15 

the first jubilee has approached us, not as mercenaries, but 
as a free people. We see nor hear of no assailing hand to 
molest the domestic stream of our peace. Your affections 
for these republics has ever been like Rachel's weeping, 
who would not be contented, because those around her were 
not. You have passed the Rubicon of faith and faithful- 
ness, and be it our joy and delight to sooth the wrinkled 
years of your decline. 

Ladies, you, my fair friends, fill a very important charac- 
ter in the human family. It is you that cause every laud- 
able emotion of a virtuous heart. It is you that cheer man, 
on this dreary pathway of life. It is you that incite re- 
search in the various paths .of literature. 'Tis you who 
ennoble his magnanimity in the battle field of death. It is 
the paragon of your grace, that is the theme of the muse 
and the songs. When stale melancholy is louped upon the 
brow, and cruel vicissitudes have marred the hope and pros- 
pect of man, then it is you that calms the agitated sea of 
his troubles. 

And when hope, that most ever attending companion of 
the human race, is obliterated, then, then it is, that you 
nurse the remaining tendril by a sympathizing participation 
of his griefs. 

" When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
A ministering angel thou." 



THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 801 746 8 $ 



\ 



